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Category: Society
End of Year Retrospectives: 75 Book Covers
“There are some gems among the 75 Best Book Covers of 2018.”
Deadly Chinese Fentanyl is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins
“Fentanyl’s potency has « transformed the global trafficking — and policing — of narcotics.”
11:00 | 11-November-1918
100 years ago today, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the guns along the 440-mile line stretching from Switzerland to the North Sea fell silent. The war started 1 August 1914 just as German Chancellor Otto von Bismark once famously predicted around 1884, by “some damned fool thing in the Balkans;” in this case, the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, a city of agony in the 20th century). But on 11 November 1918, it was finally “all quiet on the Western Front.”
9 November: Schicksalstag
In the next few days, there will be much remembrance of the events of 100 years ago—the end of World War I. Not as much in the U.S., where World War I is like the Korean War, a largely forgotten conflict, even though 115,516 Americans died between 1917-1918, along with over 320,000 sickened, most in the influenza epidemic of 1918.
Beery Originalist Quotables
Here are a few Original Originalist quotes worth Originally quoting, from a few of our first Original Founders:
Every Building
“On this page you will find maps showing almost every building in the United States. Why did we make such a thing? We did it as an opportunity for you to connect with the country’s cities and explore them in detail.”
German Roofer Finds Message from Grandfather
A message in a bottle on the roof of a Goslar, Germany, cathedral was found by the grandson of the writer. An authentic lesson from history: “On March 26, 1930, four roofers in this small west German town inscribed a message to the future. “Difficult times of war lie behind us,” they wrote. After describing…
Squeezed to Death
“On every airline flight, a crew member talks to passengers in the exit rows to see whether they can, as Federal Aviation Administration regulations specify, “pass expeditiously through the emergency exit” if needed. Given how passengers have grown in inverse proportion to the spaciousness of airliner seats, anything like “expeditious” evacuation of an entire airliner seems doubtful.”
Of Manifestoes and Buildings and Truman and Stuff
[Edited two days later to fix some typos and unclear, stream-of-consciousness-type unclear phrases.] During the recent effort to rename the Russell Senate Office Building, it would have been nice to remember that both Richard Russell, the building’s current namesake, and John McCain, the proposed replacement namesake, (while useful tools to poke the likes of President…
The Conscience Stirs
I pretty much wish I had remained disconnected from FB while also being innovative enough to stay connected to the real people in my life without Facebook’s corrupting middle man kleptocracy. I sense that there is another housecleaning coming; my involvement will need to be further curtailed. I’m thinking of what we can do next … there are far better possibilities, surely, than this unholy mess of greed and venality.
Eggheads
More Grief
This is kind of like how I feel about my (possibly four) upcoming surgeries: I don’t want to do this, but I have to, and I hate it. Received a kind e-mail yesterday telling me of the death of Bill Schock of Falls City, NE, on Thursday evening, six weeks short of his 100th birthday….
On Shitholes
Every single day is a new low. How low can we go? There is no bottom. So pretty goddamned low. Shithole low.
Shuttling Between Failures
The story is sordid and long, but the details were made clear by Matt Viser’s excellent Globe piece. To wit: Lorenzo sold the Donald the Eastern Shuttle for an overvalued $365 million (if DT had created a brand-new shuttle from the ground up with brand-new planes, not old worn-out 727s, estimates were that he could have done it for $300 million.) Of course, the money was all borrowed. It was 1989; Eastern (and Continental) were already almost dead from Lorenzo’s sledgehammer and the economy was tanking. Pan Am 103 was bombed, the first Gulf War was about to begin. It was incredibly bad judgement to overpay a bunch of other peoples’ money for something that was guaranteed to tank.
Same Here
There’s this thing that has been closely guarded for going on 40 years in 2018. It’s my secret. So as it hits its 40th birthday in our new year, I decided it’s time to tell the world.
They Don’t Like the New ‘America First’ As Much As They Did the Lindbergh Version
So let’s see if I’ve got this. Germany, a country in which there are still many women alive who were raped by invading Russian Red Army soldiers and in which the human products of those rapes are still living, now trust … Russia more than the United States.
Questions. We Got ‘Em.
Why? Because, as reporter Anne Kingston notes, women are “female reproductive vessels” and not human beings. And because Long Dong Silver has always, and will always, get a free pass. And both of these are realities for reasons which surpasseth understanding.
American Carnage: 3-Dec-17
Nazis are just “the normal people next door” and nothing bad should happen to either them or the New York Times for pointing this out, says The New York Times.
American Carnage: 17-Nov-17
The Diddler’s Club What we learned this week: • Al Franken is the latest member of the “People Who Diddled People Who Didn’t Want to be Diddled” Club. This Diddlers Club, of which we’re all so very proud, officially now consists of the nation’s President; at least two former presidents; two or three sitting United…
American Carnage: 10-Nov-17
Peckerwoods! What we learned this week: • Comedian Louis CK and Crusading Crazy Ass Roy Moore were accepted into that venerable old boy’s club, that newly-open-to-didlers-from-outside-the-church institution, The Ancient and Venerable Order of Priests Expecting Complete, Knightly Exoneration; Rewarded With Oodles Of Dancing Students (a.k.a. “P.E.C.K.E.R.W.O.O.D.S.”) Golf and Country Club. Greeting them at the door…
The Own Us
It’s all a sordid mess and they need to be yanked hard.
Rip, Gronk, Rip!
My very first animated gif: via GIPHY
Sorry We Destroyed Your Life After You Saved Our Country
“Alan Turing, the Enigma codebreaker who took his own life after being convicted of gross indecency under anti-homosexuality legislation, is to be given a posthumous pardon.” …
And?
“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.” —Barack Obama [Meanwhile, his “gay brothers and sisters” tap their feet, waiting impatiently. Well,…
It is Difficult …
“How long? Not long. Because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1965 … to keep up a blog like this one, which has, at various times in the past, been chock-a-block with details and observations from our lives. Living two years back in…
Marriage Equality Arrives in Connecticut
The governor of Connecticut signed «marriage equality into law today». Equal protection under the law as provided in the U.S. Constitution was thereby affirmed by all three branches of the government. ‘Four years ago this week, Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed a bill allowing civil unions. Today, with the stroke of a pen, she abolished…
The Bigots' Last Hurrah
It’s a great title for a great «column». Frank Rich of the New York Times sums up very thoroughly and very presciently the status of one of America’s favorite Culture War battlegrounds/sports grounds in which people like us are kicked around like political footballs (cartoon at left is from 2004, Steve Kelley of the New…
Rarin' to Go
Gavin Newsom, the man who presided over our first civil union ceremony when he was still a San Francisco supervisor, wants to get a jump on gay marriages «the evening of 16 June», instead of waiting for the next morning: ‘San Francisco officials have asked the state for permission to begin marrying same-sex couples a…
Just Married
Thank you, Canada! And thank you Neil Hodgins and all our wonderful friends! Pics are up: « The Wedding » « The Reception »
Now Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Benefits!
Dear Fascist Michigan Voters-For-Prop-2: « Screw. You. »: ‘A Michigan judge ruled on Tuesday that a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage does not prevent the state from offering health insurance benefits to the same-sex partners of state workers. Ingham County Circuit Judge Joyce Draganchuk said health care benefits are benefits of employment, not marriage. Twenty-two same-sex couples…